Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people

(1) on home detention curfew committed suicide between 1999 and 2009;

(2) released on an early release scheme committed suicide in (a) 2006, (b) 2007 and (c) 2008.

Claire Ward (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Watford, Labour)

The home detention curfew, early removal and end of custody licence schemes enable eligible prisoners to be released from prison earlier than the half-way point of their sentence. NOMS does not collect data centrally on the numbers of self-inflicted deaths of such offenders after they have been released into the community.

The National Offender Management Service has a broad, integrated and evidence-based prisoner suicide prevention and self-harm management strategy that seeks to reduce the distress of all those in prison and to ensure that released at-risk prisoners receive comparable support to that received in prison. As part of the pre-release care planning process, offender managers must be informed of any risk of harm to self or others and the management strategies which have been tried in the prison setting. Prisons have local protocols in place which seek to ensure that at-risk prisoners are linked with community based organisations providing support after release.